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Talk:Lok Sabha Constituencies
Tracking Indian Democracy India has 543 Lok Sabha Constituencies. At final count according to the AC-9.xls Election Commission of India 8071 candidates contested the elections for the 15th Lok Sabha. Tracking the elections is no small task and undoubtedly the Election Commission of India has hard work at hand. Issues with the Information The information about Indian constituencies and candidates raises the following important issues that need to be addressed: * There is no consistent “naming scheme” for constituencies. Some names repeat in different states. On Giki the naming scheme introduced was "constituency name (State code) Lok Sabha Constituency". * Names and boundaries change with delimitation and do not render the constituency as a useful basis for administration or tracking progress. There is no public database of any demographic or development indicators for the constituency. This makes it very difficult to make elected representatives accountable for progress in the constituency. It would be more meaningful to have the constituency overlap with a district. ** In order to use comparable statistical information from all kinds of governmental and other sources, it is really necessary to use a common set of boundaries. Districts are the most appropriate. In order to match the larger number of MPs with the number of districts, I suggest that we introduce the idea of Multi-member constituencies where necessary. Urban conglomerations would be divided up according to Census or other political units. We could separate Core urban areas from suburban areas, thereby attempting to make the constituencies more homogenous.06:06, 21 May 2009 (UTC) * There is no "person registry" in India or even a standard name format as the data listed above indicates. This does not uniquely identify any individual contesting the elections. Family names and given names are not consistently ordered. Some names are incomplete or even aliases. Titles like "Dr." or "Prof" are not consistently entered and not separated from the name. Giki used the symbol on which the person contested to distinguish people with the same name. This may not be a sufficient criterion to ensure unique pages for each unique person. Information of place of birth, date of birth may be additional information to enhance unique identity. This scheme needs to be followed for voters too and a One-India Card may be a step in the right direction. * There is no "address registry" of valid addresses or even a standard address format as the data indicates. This makes it difficult to identify the state, city or even authenticity of an address. * The candidate agenda, declarations and website should also be part of a common public spreadsheet. Information should not be split into different databases and formats making it inaccessible or difficult to compare. Future Use * The constituency pages can move towards involving all stakeholders in creating, owning and implementing a constituency agenda that goes beyond voting. * The constituency pages are a placeholder to track the peoples representatives- irrespective of whether they secured a winning vote. Ultimately they represent a perspective of the stakeholders of the constituency. * The Political Parties can track the progress of delivering the promises made to the people. --Anupam 04:19, 21 May 2009 (UTC) Dr. Anupam Saraph with advice from Prof Madhav Nalapat